I know, I know, Mother Nature just dumped 50cm of snow on us in the space of a week. This afternoon I saw a snowplow dozer spin its giant wheels trying to clear the snow from the service lane behind my house. It’s been cold, wet, windy and nasty these past couple of days. So bear with me for a minute while I try to convince you that spring has arrived early.

Exhibit A: Casey Dienel, aka White Hinterland. Wait, where are you all going? Don’t leave, I can explain! I know White Hinterland sounds like an awfully chilly name. You there, in the back, you’re nodding your head yes. You’ve heard of Casey Dienel? Then you understand.

Two years ago the Brooklyn-by-way-of-Massachusetts singer-songwriter put out her debut album Wind-Up Canary under her own name. The world isn’t exactly hurting for piano-playing female singers, true, but unlike most singer-songwriters of this particular type Dienel doesn’t come across as sensitive, pained, emotionally conflicted, downbeat, or any of a thousand other adjectives you could apply to the recognized leaders of the niche. Instead, Dienel’s most obvious quality is a carefree, happy-go-lucky kind of weightlessness. The closest spiritual contemporary that comes to mind is early-career Mirah, back when she was taking her clothes off for meteor showers and breathing carburated sighs.

Since then, Dienel has played a bunch of shows all over the place, and then fell oddly silent for a couple of months. All she promised during that time was something new and different. Then, at the beginning of the year, she said Casey Dienel, the recording artist, was dead. In its place is White Hinterland, a project that, at least at first glance, doesn’t appear to stray too far from Dienel’s solo work. This is a good thing, because it’s that happy-go-lucky spirit that’s so essential to making songs like “Dreaming of the Plum Trees” work. It may remind you of the Peanuts theme at first, but even after that association fades there’s still the sense that Dienel could make a killing providing new soundtracks to old Sesame Street segments and cute community theatre plays. Give it half a chance and “Dreaming of the Plum Trees” will lift your spirits like a helium balloon riding a breeze of crisp, fresh air. It just might even have you imagining that spring has already sprung. Seriously, any more of this and flowers will shoot through the snow.

Phylactery Factory comes out in March.